Most educated people know about the speed of light and absolute zero, although numbers like Boltzmann's constant and the Chandrasekhar limit are not generally topics of conversation. In this entertaining introduction to the mathematical order underpinning the universe, however, James Stein explains how such numbers reveal the origins of our world and what the future holds. Stein also gives us the human side of the equations, telling how numbers defining gravity, electrical fields, thermodynamics, and other fundamentals of existence were finally found, sometimes after centuries of dedicated effort.

"A brisk, fun ride.... Stein is good at extracting drama from the brilliant minds and experiments that fill his book, and it's impossible to read it without gaping in awe at just how much science got done in the days prior to statistical analysis software and multicore processors."—Boston Globe